Time up, pens down: what we thought of the draft NPPF
All the best blogs start with a poem:
“In the land of the UK planning,
Reform was the talk that was reigning,
But the laws were all muddled,
And the process befuddled,
So the plans kept on endlessly straining.”
Not one of mine, to be fair. Credit goes to the jaw-droppingly adept ChatGPT. I asked it to write a limerick about UK planning reform. And we must give our robot overlord its due: “endlessly straining” sums things up pretty well. Don’t you think?
If you’re trawling through LinkedIn this week, you may have been taunted with glimpses of sunshine on the Côte d'Azur from those lucky ducks doing the rounds at MIPIM in Cannes. Well, crumbs. I too was set to be one of those lucky ducks, readers. I’d packed (including sunglasses). I’d even got as far as Nice Airport. At that moment, in the lengthy post-Brexit line for passport control, I found out one of my kids wasn’t well (they’re absolutely fine now, thank heavens!) all of which meant that - long story short - I had to go directly from arrivals into departures to come home again. A 12 hour round-trip, and the closest I got to half-decent weather was gazing forlornly out of the Starbucks window at Nice airport. Here are 2 #nofilter pictures from the airplane on my voyage back to Blighty - one is of the Côte d'Azur, the other is of the beautiful Isle of Sheppey in Kent. Now - 10 points if you can tell which is which:
And people say our weather can be gloomy.
Annnnnyway, to business:
Remember the Government’s consultation on the draft NPPF and the Levelling Up Bill. Sure you do. My early (and dare I say, emotive 😬) reaction to it was here. Well the deadline for responses has now passed. So… time up, pens down, please. And, thank goodness, there has now been a raft of proper, grown up and considered responses to what’s on offer. Here’s a short sample of some of the biggies with links for the true keenos:
RTPI: here.
RICS: here.
RIBA: here.
Local Government Association: here.
Planning Officers Society: here.
Home Builders Federation: here.
Land Promoters & Developers Federation: here.
British Property Federation: here.
Even in that short list, the chasms of understanding and approach are vast. It’s amazing. We live, I fear, on different planets sometimes.
Even on the basics. E.g. does the planning system have any impact at all on e.g. housing delivery and affordability? Well it depends who you ask:
The HBF and LPDF responses - building on startling work from Lichfields - paint a picture of a system in crisis. The modelling suggests that the proposed NPPF changes will themselves result in around 77,000 fewer new homes per year. 30,400 per year of that total is attributable to the suggested removal of the need to review Green Belt boundaries - more on that below. That shortfall will lead to a range of social ills, including worsening affordability, higher rents, longer housing waiting lists, increased homelessness, falling birth rates, and a total hit to the economy of around £34bn. 😬.
But turn over to the Planning Officers Society, and we’re in another world altogether. In this world, depressed delivery “is not the fault of the planning system” and “it is questionable as to whether increasing the supply of land […] would make any material difference in affordability”. Indeed - hold onto your hats - “land supply is not a barrier to delivering homes including in areas such as London and the southeast”.
When we get to the detailed policy proposals, most lines of response flow from these fundamental divisions. For instance:
For the Planning Officers Society and the Local Government Association, ditching a requirement for authorities to demonstrate a 5 year supply of housing within 5 years of adopting a local plan would be a welcome bolstering of the “plan-led” system that should serve to reduce the burdens of fighting appeals on 5 year housing land supply. For the BPF, HBF, the LPDF and - indeed - RICS and the RTPI, this change will suppress housing delivery in a way that is antithetical to the Government’s commitment to delivering 300,000 homes a year.
For the RTPI, RICS, RIBA, the HBF, the BPF and the LPDF, ditching the requirement for local plans to be “justified” with reference to “proportionate” evidence would - as to the RTPI put it - undermine “the legitimacy of the planning process”. But for the POS and the LGA, it’s a sensible way of making plan-making less onerous.
No surprises, then, that there really is an awful lot about which we disagree. And time will tell on which of these two planets Michael Gove and Rachel Maclean live.
But, do you know: wade through the responses long enough, and something a little surprising happens. Because there are several moments where all this rancour and division starts to thaw. To melt even. And we get into points that almost look a bit like (whisper it softly)… consensus. Not just developers’ points or local government points or planning industry points. But points about which, it would seem, the lion’s share of us actually agree!
Given how deeply at odds we all are on so much, don’t you think it’d be worth taking a moment to cradle those rare birds of agreement? Well, I do. So here are 4 big points:
Not reviewing Green Belt boundaries is a bad idea - you may remember I wrote back in January about the proposal at §142 of the draft NPPF that “Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period.” And indeed in December too. Safe to say, I think it’s a deeeeeeply problematic idea. And do you know what’s interesting: most folks seem to agree. The RTPI tells us that Green Belt reviews at a strategic level are important for them to serve their purposes, and that the Government’s proposal would inevitably have a negative impact on housing affordability. The HBF and LPDF agree - again, the Lichfields work suggests this measure alone will be responsible for a loss of over 30,000 homes a year. And, perhaps more surprising, the POS agrees too - it tells us that the change would have “significant unintended consequences” in terms of housing delivery, would create “tensions” with non-Green Belt authorities and would make it “likely the Government will fail to meet its housing target” [So maybe the planning system can play a role in improving housing delivery after all, Ed.]. Instead, the POS suggests strategic-level reviews of the Green Belt through new strategic plans (i.e. not just individual authorities sorting our their own boundaries). And do you know what? The RTPI agrees with them about that. And so does the HBF. Strategic cross-boundary planning to deal with lots of issues - including Green Belt boundaries. Come on, folks. It’s our only way out of this mess.
The “urban uplift” doesn’t work - remember 2020? Ah, what a time. The year of everyone’s favourite Star Wars prequel: the mutant algorithm wars. Which I summarised here in my 2020 🏆#planorak award 🏆 write up for u-turn of the year. Well, the consequence of that u-turn was the “urban uplift”. I.e. if we can’t increase housing targets in places where new homes are actually needed because of back-bench rebellions, but we still want to end up with a national total of around 300,000 new homes a year, what on earth do we do? Well, it turns out we do something totally arbitrary and unevidenced - we add a 35% uplift for those urban local authorities in the top 20 cities and urban centres. The PPG explains it here. Long story short: it hasn’t worked. London is missing its mark by almost 50,000 homes a year. Work by Turley and Tetlow King shows the vast challenges of delivering adequate affordable housing with such a myopic focus on urban centres. The HBF refers to work from Catriona Riddell that shows that of the top 20 towns and cities, only two - Leicester and Plymouth - are unencumbered by Green Belt and party to strategic planning mechanisms with neighbouring authorities. But don’t let the evidence get in the way of a good policy proposal: the latest consultation says “the government intends to maintain this uplift and to require that this is, so far as possible, met by the towns and cities concerned rather than exported to surrounding areas”. So far, I’ve found literally no support for this idea. Everyone from the POS to the HBF think the urban uplift is unevidenced and undeliverable. It was a political plaster that needs tearing off.
An applicant’s “past behaviour” should not be taken into account in decision-making: we’ve talked about this one before too. Indeed, I thought the idea of having regard to an applicant’s previous “bad behaviour” as a material consideration in deciding whether to grant planning permission was so silly that I placed it in the top 3 worst ideas for planning reform of 2022: the big 🏆 awards 🏆 are here. But happy days, I have found literally no support for this ridiculous idea. So that, one would hope, may be the end of that. As the POS put it, “it is a fundamental principle of planning that permission goes with the land”. Amen.
The NPPF should support the supply of specialist older people’s housing: it’s a no-brainer, isn’t it. The PPG tells us - and rightly so - that “the need to provide housing for older people is critical”. It’s critical to house our ageing population properly. It’s critical to allow that population to downsize in order to free up desperately needed family housing. Most of all, specialist older people’s housing can literally help us live longer, and can bring about enormous savings to the NHS. Well, if all of this so critical, why is there next to nothing about specialist accommodation for older people in the NPPF itself? The draft NPPF proposes a long overdue reference to establishing the need for “retirement housing, housing-with-care and care homes” through local plans. I’ve seen no objection to that idea. If anything, the consensus seems to be that more should be done to reflect the flexibility and variety in this marketplace, and the soaring demand.
See friends - it isn’t all bad. So be you in Cannes, in Kent or indeed anywhere else: stay well, #planoraks. Let’s hope that these days of “endless straining” are numbered. And that the smattering of points of industry-wide agreement might direct our way towards a happier future. This is the season for optimism - heck, proper Spring starts next week! And do you know, round the corner from my gaff, on Hampstead Heath, the cherry blossom trees are already in bloom. Maybe they know something we don’t.
Last but not least, this month marks the 3 year anniversary of planoraks.com. 1 of 2 lock-down projects of mine that turned out to have staying power (along with the arrival of my muddy labrador, Bob). 3 years in now, and over 100,000 “unique” #planoraks (aka “people”) have visited the website and read almost 1/4 million blog posts. Meanwhile, around 3,500 of you - the hardcore! - receive these rantings and ravings over email every few weeks. So thanks for sticking around these last 3 years. And if you’re not a subscriber, you can always become one. The rates are pretty competitive.
So do your level best to stay upbeat, planoraks. And, whatever else you do, #keeponplanning!
